But that changed this week in California when she turned her full attention to Donald Trump. With the brash real estate magnate as her full-time foil, Clinton finally seemed to find her voice.
In
speech after speech across the Golden State, Clinton delivered a fiery,
point-by-point takedown of the real estate magnate, casting him as a
greedy bully who was eager to profit from the financial woes of the
middle class Americans who lost homes and jobs in the 2008 economic
crash.
"I will continue to stand up
and speak out against what he says -- the kinds of positions and
policies he's putting forward, the way he treats people, how divisive he
is," Clinton said Wednesday in Buena Park.
It
could be a key turning point for her campaign. Her supporters and
donors have been baffled for months about her inability to vanquish
Sanders, given her influence and the depths of her support in the
Democratic Party. Recent polls have shown Trump closing in on Clinton in
potential general election matchups -- raising the level of alarm about
her ability to focus on the general election campaign.
But while Clinton may have momentarily found her stride, fresh controversies like the one that emerged Wednesday -- the State Department Inspector General report
saying she failed to follow the rules or inform key department staff
regarding her use of a private email server -- could quickly knock her
back off message.
Though the former secretary of state has
not yet clinched the magic number of delegates needed to win the
Democratic nomination, she campaigned here as though Sanders' campaign
was the farthest thing from her mind.
Her
singular focus on Trump was most striking when she campaigned a few
miles from Sanders in Riverside Tuesday, but never mentioned him.
Delivering a speech that sent a jolt of electricity through the
initially subdued crowd, she vowed not to let Trump go unanswered.
Targeting
Trump's image as a champion for the little guy as a fraud, Clinton
pounded Trump repeatedly for comments that he made in 2006 in a Trump
University audiobook where he said he "sort of" hoped that predictions
of looming housing market crash were accurate. If the bubble burst, "you
can make a lot of money," he said.
"Why on earth would we elect somebody
president who actually rooted for the collapse of the market?" she said
with indignation in Riverside as the crowd roared their approval and
chanted her name. "The fact is Donald Trump thought he could make money
off of people's misery."
In Orange
County on Wednesday, Clinton also cast Trump as "a divider" who has
denigrated women, Muslims and people with disabilities. Keying off his
raucous event in New Mexico on Tuesday night, she specifically called
him out for attacking Gov. Susana Martinez.
"He makes a habit of insulting women,"
Clinton said in Buena Park. "Last night he insulted the Republican
Governor Martinez of New Mexico -- just gratuitously. I don't know. He
seems to have something about women."
"Whatever
reason he does it, it is setting Americans against Americans," she
said. "It is a recipe for more divisiveness at a time where we must be
united."
Donald Trump has a woman problem -- 3 of them
Trump
did not directly respond to those attacks in Anaheim Wednesday, but
told the crowd he was eager to run against the former secretary of state
-- who he continues to call "Crooked Hillary."
Recalling
her 2008 campaign ad, where she was portrayed as the only candidate
qualified to take the 3:00 am emergency call in the White House, Trump
repeatedly questioned her judgment and fitness to be commander-in-chief,
faulting her for turmoil in Iraq and Libya.
"You
remember the famous ad -- when they call at 3 in the morning, who's
going to be there to answer the call?" Trump said. "She was sleeping.
They called. They kept calling. Did you see hundreds and hundreds of
emails and calls? And they kept calling and she was sleeping, folks. She
was sleeping. I don't sleep much. I don't sleep much."
After watching Trump slay one Republican
rival after another, Clinton's campaign has spent months workshopping
the most effective way to target the real estate mogul.
For
now, they seem to have settled on that three-prong attack -- that Trump
is a businessman who only protects his own interests; that he is a man
who is incapable of working with others; and a candidate who would pose a
risk to national security.
Clinton looks to pop Trump's populist appeal
Attempting
to tie those threads together at an International Brotherhood of
Electrical Workers event on Tuesday, Clinton suggested that Trump may
have never paid any federal income tax. Trump has declined to release
his tax returns, because he says he is under audit.
"He
goes around saying, 'Well we have got to have a stronger military,'"
Clinton said. "Well he certainly doesn't want to pay a penny to protect
our men and women in uniform."
Top campaign aides, in discussions with
Clinton, have settled on a strategy of responding to Trump with
policy-focused attacks while casting him as someone who has no idea what
real Americans actually want.
Clinton will not, aides say, respond to Trump's personal attacks, particularly about her husband's marital indiscretions.
Clinton's surrogates have gotten behind
that message, taking on Trump's business dealings and painting him as a
selfish and callous self-promoter. On Wednesday, Massachusetts Sen.
Elizabeth Warren leveled a series of Twitter attacks on Trump, but one
stuck out to Clinton's aides.
"I fight for working families every day, @realDonaldTrump," Warren tweeted. "You fight only for Donald Trump."
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